Tag: Twitter

As a Semi-new Schipulite, I attended The Social Media Breakfast Club which met up at Canopy (Mmmm) last month. Guest speaker Amiko Kauderer talked about the beauty of social media, and how to get your company involved in connecting with the world to bring in brand awareness.

Amiko Kauderer works for the coolest U.S Government agency of all time: NASA. As the Social Media Lead and Web Manager, she is in charge of helping the NASA Johnson Space Center get their message across in today’s digital and social media world thru blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

Amiko applied her 14+ years of experience to get NASA social media skeptics to change their minds and have astronauts open up to the world thru a series of strategic steps. Below are my personal favorite points she mentioned on how you can get your company ready for a Social Media Blast Off.

Getting your company to say Yes to Social Media:

Phase 1: Get your Key people on board First.
Most new concepts or phases of a company tend to be met with skepticism, so getting your key people to say yes to social media is invaluable. Most doors open up and it is less likely for others to question your decisions when big names back you up.

Phase 2: Respect the company’s privacy policy.
As obvious as this seems, it is worth repeating. Some information is appropriate to share, some is not. Letting your company know you will respect their opinion and privacy is important when it comes to gaining their trust, and ultimately open up the gates to communication.

Phase 3: Make it a trend amongst the company.
Never underestimate the force of competitiveness in an office setting and how it can push others to try new things. Once Amiko got one astronaut to tweet (thru lots of begging and pleading) the others quickly followed and wanted to become part of something new.

Phase 4: The Basics of Tweeting
Make sure you take the time to teach your astronauts (or coworkers) the basics of tweeting or posting on Facebook. Amiko wasn’t really talking about the step by step process of Tweeting, but more about a set of guidelines such as relax and be yourself and don’t get too technical because you might confuse others. Last but not least, have fun with how you interact with others like the “NASA Mohawk guy” Bobak Ferdowsi, who would tweet his various hairstyles designed in accordance with the missions he worked on.

Phase 5: Designate a team to keep your posts up to date and engaging to your audience.
It is important to keep your social media posts up to date, creative and engaging, but doing so can prove to be challenging even when it is a full time job. If you don’t have the budget to hire someone, finding people in your company who are media savvy and willing to help should be your best bet.

This Friday is the next meeting of the Social Media Breakfast Club! The topic is making video work with Social Media. More event details here!

*We appreciate SMBC Houston and Amiko Kauderer for this great event, for more pictures please refer to the Tendenci link below*

Facebook makes changes to the way the network works on the daily. I do my best to stay up to speed, and I’m normally pretty polar in how I feel about an algorithm update here or an interface change there, but Facebook’s latest major announcement has me teetering. Here’s what’s going on. . .

You can subscribe to Public status updates from people you are not Facebook friends with.

You can choose what kind of updates you see from your current Facebook friends. You can choose to subscribe to All Updates, Most Updates or Only Important Updates.

You can allow people who aren’t your friends to subscribe to your Public Facebook status updates. Don’t worry, you have to opt in for this to be available to those who stumble across your Facebook profile.

Why this is great

Follow your Faves

You can subscribe to a celebrity or famous blogger’s Public status updates. They’ll likely never make Facebook friends with you, and now you don’t have to troll their profiles to see what they are publishing publicly.

Filtered Content

You can trim your newsfeed down to the status updates that really interest you. For example, if the girl who sat behind you in Sophomore Chemistry updates her Facebook every time her cat sneezes, you can choose to see ‘Only Importantâ€ updates from her without feeling badly about hiding or unfriending her (but if she really updates every time her cat sneezes, you really shouldn’t feel badly about unfriending her. Just sayin). You can also subscribe to specific types of content your friends are posting. Choices are Life Events, Status Updates, Photos and Videos, and Games.

Market Yourself

For personal marketing purposes, you can extend the number of people who read your content by allowing non-friends to subscribe to your feeds. This way, if you would like anyone in the world to easily access to knowledge you share regarding specific topics, but don’t want to be friends with the whole world, you can allow other Facebook users to subscribe to your public content.

Why this really isn’t that great

Dilutes the Power of the Fan Page

I totally get that there is a difference between a celebrity’s personal profile page and their Facebook fan page, and that there will be different content, but:

Being able to subscribe to their personal pages seems to dilute the purpose of the fan page.

Seeing as most celebrities share what they want the world to know via their public fan pages, what new content would I really be subscribing to here?

I know that this feature doesn’t just apply to major celebrities, but you get the point. Lines are getting greyer here. Could be a good thing, but my gut reaction is to feel a tad uneasy.

I’m Just Jaded

I really appreciate getting to trim down what I see from which friends. This is cool, and by far the best part of this new feature. But honestly, Facebook, I’m not inclined to use it, because you’re just going to change it up in two weeks anyway.

Hello, Twitter, is that you?

This whole subscribing-to-people-without-having-to-be-their-friend thing reeks of Twitter. I like using Twitter and the way it works. . . when I’m on Twitter. Basically, I feel like this update begs the question: ‘ISN’T THAT WHAT TWITTER IS FOR?â€

Let’s look at the numbers: Facebook has 750 million active users. Twitter just announced that it reached the 100 million active users milestone. If I were to make the assumption that everyone on Twitter is also on Facebook, I could reasonably assume that 650 million of the active users on Facebook are NOT interested in Twitter. So, why are we trying to make Facebook more like Twitter?!

This Automates Trolling

Well, that about sums up my point there.

Those are my two cents on this update. I’d love to hear yours. If you’re interested, you can follow my public content on Twitter, which is where I will continue to focus on posting it until I see Facebook embrace the subscription thing for personal marketing.

In an effort to lure users back to their site and away from 3rd party clients, Twitter is rolling out a slew of new features. The most important feature of the #NewTwitter will allow users to embed videos, photos and other multimedia directly into their streams. Followers will now be able to view these media-rich tweets without having to click on any external links. Instead they will access video, photos and live streaming content from the Twitter interface.

The new UI (user interface) uses a two panel design that allows users to view their feed on the left and media content on the right. If the design looks familiar don’t be surprised. It is essentially the same design as the Twitter Ipad app.

This new design will allow users to integrate multimedia far more easily in their tweeting experience. The #NewTwitter has essentially taken the best features of 3rd party clients like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, and Seesmic and combined them. Here is a list of some of the new features:

Streamlined user interface w/ tabs

Ability to view photos, videos and other media content without clicking a link

If all these features sound great to you, you will probably have to wait to use them. Twitter is rolling out these changes over the next several weeks. In the meantime, check out this video showcasing the new Twitter design and features.

I don’t know about you but I am perfectly happy with my 3rd party app. I have been using Hootsuite for over a year now and I love it. I can manage several accounts, assign users, view multiple streams, review account analytics, schedule tweets, attached files, images and watch video directly in the stream. Most importantly, I can access Hootsuite from any web browser. I wonder what took Twitter so long to adopt these basic functions to their site.

Don’t get me wrong, once I’ve been upgraded to the new version, I’ll give it a go but something tells me that I will return to my beloved twitter app. How about you? Which twitter apps do you use and will you abandon them for the new twitter? Let us know in the comments.

Boss [baws, bos]

-adjective
1. exemplifies a unique quality; awesome; incredible
2. An expression from the mid 1950s, which fell from favor by the early 1960sâ€¦.until now…

What does August mean to you? If you said football season, well I’d say you just earned yourself a gold star. Simply put, the world is a better place when you spend 10 consecutive hours, every Sunday, watching the gridiron madness.

This year more than ever, we have the ability to be a part of the game via Twitter- witnessing a player’s thoughts pre-huddle, during the 60 and after the stadium has cleared. We are not just following bloggers who love the sport; we are following the guys down on the grass, feeling the pressure in the red zone. You will find that some players will inspire, others will talk trash and the majority will misspell common wordsâ€¦but collectively, their micro blogs Twitter streams are most definitely boss.

C Pemby’s Top NFL Players on Twitter

Terrill is the Defensive Tackle for the Seattle Seahawksâ€¦and let’s not kid ourselves, he’s a whole lotta’ man. While he is not on the football field, he plays in a band surprisingly called, The Craig Terrill Band.

Seahawk bowling day. I am on track for a perfect 300 right now. Poundsâ€¦that is.

If Sanchez doesn’t pull this game out he always has ‘Entourage’ to fall back on.

If you loved him on Dancing with the Stars then you will most certainly love following Ochocinco – a lover, fighter and designer shoe connoisseur. While I commend his efforts, there will never come a day where I will take a man seriously with a reality show called, “The Ultimate Catch.” Get it? He’s a wide receiver and he catches the ball…you’re so clever Chad.

If you are living in Houston and want to literally follow a local player – Brian Cushing is your man. He will keep you up-to-date on exactly where he is at all times which leads me to believe he is unaware of his 10,777 followers . Come on Cushing, we all know there is only one bowling alley in Bellaire (Palace Lanes).

Bowling w/ the team over in Bellaire.

Ok, your turn – tell me about an NFL player that keeps you entertained via Twitter!

Well, Twitter is all a-twitter this morning about their big announcement to finally make some money via ‘Promoted Tweets.â€ In a casual (if a bit vague) blog post, co-founder Biz Stone lays out the high level points of the program Q&A style with promises of more info today from COO Dick Costolo at the AdAge Digital Conference. So while we all wait in eager anticipation for more specific information about the program, here are the bullet points:

The program will be introduced in phases. As Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle’s TechBlog points out, phase one will leverage Twitter’s most valuable asset’ the data of its more than 20 million users, ‘Twitter’s real value lies in the aggregated information of its estimated 22.3 million users, surfaced by search, so it makes sense that the company would turn to this strength to make money.â€

In phase one ‘Promoted Tweetsâ€ will show up only for searches on Twitter itself. No Promoted Tweets on Twitter apps yet.

If you perform a search on a particular term that is relevant to one of the companies paying for the Promoted Tweet service, like those Google Sponsored Links at the top of a Google search, a tweet from the paying company will be displayed at the top of the search page. The New York Times article ‘Twitter Unveils Plans to Draw Money From Adsâ€ has a pretty fleshed out example of this using Starbucks,

Starbucks, for instance, often publishes Twitter posts about its promotions, like free pastries. But the messages quickly get lost in the thousands of posts from users who happen to mention meeting at Starbucks.

‘When people are searching on Starbucks, what we really want to show them is that something is happening at Starbucks right now, and Promoted Tweets will give us a chance to do that,â€ said Chris Bruzzo, vice president of brand, content and online at Starbucks.

In order for a Promoted Tweet to hold its ground at the top of the search page, it’s gotta resonate babyâ€¦ people don’t click it, retweet it, engage with itâ€¦ it’s outta there. And Twitter will be following the results in order to tweak the programâ€¦ again like Google with its ever evolving, mysterious, and infamous algorithm.

Twitter says these are not ads’ ‘Since all Promoted Tweets are organic Tweets, there is not a single â€˜ad’ in our Promoted Tweets platform that isn’t already an organic part of Twitter. This is distinct from both traditional search advertising and more recent social advertising. Promoted Tweets will also be timely. Like any other Tweet, the connection between you and a Promoted Tweet in real-time provides a powerful means of delivering information relevant to you at the moment.â€

Next up? According to the Times, ‘[Twitter] will show promoted posts in a user’s Twitter stream, even if a user did not perform a search and does not follow the advertiser.â€ This leaves me wondering if a post to Twitter about the overwhelming Houston pollen count induced allergies this season will elicit a Claritin tweet inserted into my stream. Twitter is the most vague about phase 2 stating, ‘Before we roll out more phases, we want to get a better understanding of the resonance of Promoted Tweets, user experience and advertiser value.â€

So there it is folksâ€¦ I reserve final judgment until I actually see it IRLâ€¦ (Update: I couldn’t post to the blog fast enough and Mashable reports Promoted Tweets are already showing up for limited searches) I think phase 1 will go by with lots of initial fan fare, may even trend for a bit, and then will fall into the obscurity of the already accepted and ignored ads that float in the periphery of the likes of sites such as Google, Facebook, The New York Times and even National Geographic. I am curious to see how much traction Promoted Tweets will actually gain. I myself don’t spend much time on a search.twitter.com‘ though over coffee in the break room this morning I learned of few co-workers who do use twitter search as their almost exclusive local search tool.

Phase 2 however, has me itching already to get my feathers all ruffled up. I am trying to maintain my calm composure, with a ‘wait and seeâ€ attitudeâ€¦ but I gotta letcha know I feel pretty dang partial to my twitter stream being my own. I don’t really have much love for the bullying bull-horn approach of most advertising campaigns and I feel like in the world of social media – where personal brands are more important than big brand loyalty and famous personalities have more followers than global news organizations – there is not going to be a great big love fest should Twitter choose to place paid tweets from mega-brands into the streams of its users.

Sometimes sharing your Twitter stream on other social networks feels like running into a church with a bullhorn. Lots of confusing weird noise and people looking at you like you are cah-razy.

Perhaps you’ve experienced this – logging into Facebook to catch up with friends and seeing bizarre non sequiturs in place of more typical status updates: ‘ROFL @randomperson I know!!! OMG!!! Frogs ARE awesome!!’ Huh, wha?

We often advise clients to re-purpose relevant online content to a variety of channels (‘doing more with less’ isn’t always silly consulting babble), this helps reach audiences that may not be on Twitter all day, for instance.

But it’s important to strategically target your audiences, taking care to match them up with the content that matters to them. Just because Google now slurps up Twitter updates on the search page doesn’t mean that you want your Great Aunt Hilda seeing your late night bar Tweets on your homecooking blog ‘s sidebar.

Here are a few easy ways to make sure your Twitter stream is going where it needs to go:

Facebook:
Check out this handy Facebook ”Selective Tweet Status’ app makes it super easy to include only the Tweets you want to appear on Facebook. Update your Twitter account as you usually do, but end your Tweet with #fb to indicate that it has the go-ahead to show up on Facebook. Easy as pie.

However, not all Tweets are created equal and you may want to take an extra special look at what your future employer’s HR team sees when they view your profile. No worries, LinkedIn puts you in control from the very beginning.

Your Tweet setup page gives you the option of how to share your Tweets – push them to your LinkedIn profile automatically or end your Tweets with #in to denote LinkedIn-safe content. Job applicant nightmare averted!

Blogs and Web sites:
I love seeing bloggers include a feed of their Twitter stream on their site – it gives me a peek at their Tweet-style and makes it beyond easy for me to connect with them on Twitter if I find them engaging.

But this doesn’t mean you want EVERYTHING popping up in a Twitter feed, especially if your blog is a bit niche and your Tweets are a bit random. Keep it focused and on-message by only pulling inthe content you want readers to see!

Create a widget for displaying an RSS feed that you grab after doing a keyword / name / brand search on the Twitter search page and embed it in your sidebar. For the more technically advanced, try creating a Yahoo Pipe that narrows your Twitter flow down to the subjects and hashtags you’re the most excited about.

Or crowd source the Tweets you pull in by including a feed of one of your Twitter lists using a simple Twitter gadget here. You won’t have complete control over who says what, but you will have a constant flow of information from trusted sources that your site visitors might find fantastic.

I have to admit, as I was settling into my chair someone glanced at my name tag and said “You work for Schipul? Don’t you already know all of this stuff?” To which I replied, “I’m hoping to get something new out of this!” … Frankly, it’s difficult to make overview presentations on social media both big picture enough to not lose anyone who isn’t knee deep in it everyday and still relevant to those of us who are. Tom did a fantastic job pulling off that seemingly impossible task!

Tom mentioned a few specific trends going on in the world of Social Media – and I think they’re all really relevant. I’ll distill them down a little here – and the full presentation can be found on Slideshare.net/tommartin.

Trends in Social Media:

1. People are getting off the bench

You’ve heard us talk about Groundswell – one of my favorite books on Social Media. Tom goes as far to say that if you read one book on social media, read Groundswell. Groundswell advocates breaking audiences down not by their demographics – but by their social technographics – how they act online.

The smallest group on the technographics ladder is called “Creators” – those creating most of the content online. Your standard Pareto principle is in place here – 20% of users create 80% of the content. This varies by what type of content we’re talking about (Twitter is more like 5% creating 90% of the content), but the amazing thing is that for the most part – these people are doing it for free.

At the bottom of the ladder are the “inactives” – the most prevalent example of this is the recent statistic that over half of Twitter users quit posting completely after 30 days. Forrester does research each year and in 2007 40% of people online fell into this category. The same study done this year shows that number down to 18%.

>> More and more people are participating each year. And by people, I mean your customers and clients.

2. Facebook is winning, MySpace is losing

I’ll let you debate this one amongst yourself, but I think we can all agree that Facebook is working hard, staying relevant, and making money doing it. With recent releases like Facebook 3.0 for iPhone and Facebook Lite, Facebook is still making innovation a priority. And according to Tom, that’s why they’re still on top (and MySpace’s lack of such innovation is why they are backsliding).

Another big win for Facebook is that it is the first to cross virtually every generation. In fact, 90% of people 65+ who are online use Facebook as their preferred social network.

A big note to marketers on Facebook – across all generations, people cite the reason they use Facebook is to keep in touch with friends. Keep this in mind as you build your presence on Facebook. Be wary of only sharing content about yourself or sending too many messages to your fans.

>> If you’re not helping people connect to their friends, you’re in danger of being clutter.

3. People are discerning – it’s more than tuning you out

Unlike traditional media that is in your face all the time (even if you tune it out, you will still inevitably pass that billboard on I-10 or catch parts of that commercial as you fast forward through it), in social media people can completely opt out. On Twitter, people can unfollow (or block) anyone they choose. On Facebook, people can unfan your page – but most likely if they don’t like the content you’re posting (frequency or subject), they will hide your updates.

This means that the number of fans doesn’t necessarily indicate activity around your brand. In Facebook Insights, pay closer attention to peaks and valleys in the actual activity going on, not the total number of fans over time.

There is a lot of content out there. If you watched every single video on YouTube, it would take over 400 yrs (412 years as of March 2008)!

>> How do you get noticed? The key is relevant content and respecting your audience.

4. Listen first

This is the essential first step. Tom equated each social media platform as its own country with “its own cultural norms and rules.” Listening is the best way to figure these nuances out for yourself. My typical recommendation to clients is to dive into Facebook, Twitter, etc. by starting a personal account first to get aquainted with the technology before going full force and representing a brand.

Another piece of listening is conversation monitoring. What are people saying about you and where are they talking? This up front research helps you craft your social media strategy, and helps you communicate more effectively in the places (and using the language) that relates to your customers.

The “What’s next?” question is one of my favorites. Tom showed off some cool stuff his company is doing with Augmented Reality. He demoed a Best Buy circular that uses augmented reality to show the 3D specs of a laptop – and a fantastic phone application called layar augmented reality that essentially brings Google maps to life by overlaying points of interest and other information over your view.

Tom’s complete Houston AAF Presentation is on Slideshare and embedded below. It’s a good one – I really enjoyed it and loved hearing his perspective on where things are now and where they are going. Thanks for the great presentation, Tom!

Well folks, it’s that time of year again. The time when technology experts, social media gurus and a whole slew of other web personalities congregate to the same online place. I’m talking of course about the SXSW 2010 Panel Picker. There are a few changes this year that make voting a bit more Interactive.

First, the voting is for more than just the Interactive (web) Conference. Voters can now select panels for the Film and Music Conferences. The many different panels are displayed in a table interface similar to Google Reader list view, with keyboard shortcuts for quick browsing. J and K will move you down and up, and a Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down vote can be cast with a 1 or 0 (very binary, we know). Voting closes September 4th, so be sure to get your picks in by then.

Speaking of picks, it may at first seem overwhelming when you discover there are 2215 panels to choose from. There is a search option to filter, but if you still need some inspiration you can always count on your social networks. A quick search on Twitter for SXSW Panel will give you an almost endless list of bit.ly links. You can also check out Facebook to see which panels you friends are voting for, or to let them know which ones you have picked. As the conference continues to grow, keep an in out for more discussion and promotion for these panels in the next few weeks.

The formula for choosing the final panels that will appear at the SXSW Conference next Spring is a mix of the voters (you and me), the staff, and an advisory board. While it isn’t a pure democracy, the voters do have a say, which is a welcome change from other large conferences. This type of outreach to the attendees and larger tech community is one of the reasons that SXSW has been so successful.

You now know where to vote, how to vote, why to vote, and places you can find out for whom to vote. If you need more recommended picks, we have a page dedicated to the Schipul SXSW 2010 Panel Picks. It is filled panels staffed by some of the Schipulites and some of the community members that we think are awesome. Along with voting, you can support your favorite panels by talking about them around the internet.

Let’s make SXSW 2010 the best it can be by using the web to promote the top panels that we want! See you in the comments…

If you are confused by today’s title then you are no doubt just as confused by some of the tweets you may be reading. Two weeks ago a British furniture store was ousted by the Twitter community for abusing the hashtag feature in twitter. They were caught using including terms from the top trends in their tweets when they had nothing to do with the subject. The furniture store has since apologized (and blamed an intern), but the damage has already been done. They may not repeat this act, but unfortunately many folks on twitter will.

New forms of Twitter spam pop up daily, and while it is fairly easy to filter out Viagra-hocking followers and ladies of the night, filtering out Twitter’s search feature is more difficult. Now that search is readily available in the sidebar on twitter.com, many users seem to think it fit to include one or many of the trending topics in with their tweets about chilling with their homies. These users are likely suffering from a bit of ignorance with regard to twitter etiquette because they see everyone else doing it. If you happen to be one of these people, you are now in the know thattacking on twitter trends to you tweets is not OK, so quit doing it. Even worse are twitter users who’s tweets consist of listing the current trending topics. Oh how much I would pay for a Ban button to block these buffoons from blasting more bad tweets.

The bigger problems with twitter trend spam are the formulaic spammers. For instance, the $2,612 scam is one of the most annoying. The tweets start with a trending topic and even the word ‘trend?’. Then, they are followed by a ridiculous fake new stories like bombs going off in NYC or Egypt, new virus outbreaks killing 3000, or anyone actually buying twitter (none of which are even remotely true). Then the tweet is followed by text along the lines of “earned $2,612 thanks to this to this” with a tiny.cc link to more web spam. This is disgusting and pretty evil at its core and will hopefully be shutdown soon by the twittergods.

As a twitter user and someone who works in the search business, I tend to use twitter search quite a bit. Many of the spammy aspects of twitter can be frustrating, and they force you do make some changes to get the results you are looking for. Here are a few changes I have made.

Narrowing the search – on Mondays, #musicmonday is almost always on the top trends. I like to use it to find bands similar to ones I already like, so I search “#musicmonday wilco” to discover related bands.

Getting creative – instead of being lazy and clicking the link to the trending topic in the sidebar, I can search for something more specific, like “Roddick 3rd set” instead of “Wimbledon“.

Look for Re-tweets – Another trick I use is to add RT or via to my searches. This lets me crowdsource the task of finding the things that real people want to point out. When I find a good nugget of info, I like to re-tweet it as well to spread the news.

There is one more action I have learned that has really taught me to use twitter as the service as it was intended: to connect with people. For instance, yesterday the 2009 Personal Democracy Forum (#pdf09) was a very popular subject on twitter, and was trending quite high for most of the day. By clicking on the link to the trend in the sidebar, I was brought to a sea of tweets with great content right next to dirty, dirty spammers. Relying on search alone would have been very difficult in my quest for useful information on a popular subject, so I decided to follow some new people. I added Clay Shirky (@cshirky) and Alex Steed (@alexsteed) to my followers and then I was able to track PDF09 from the comfort of my own home (twitter.com/home that is). And after the Forum, I am free to un-follow them if their other tweets are not something I am interested in.

The bottom line is that searching twitter for very popular subjects is a bit broken. The good news, though, is it forces you to be creative and follow new people to gain the valuable information you are seeking. Thanks to this you may discover a new favorite twitter-friend. So, the next time you are searching twitter for trending tweets, look for the good stuff, Re-tweet it, and never tack on trends to a tweet that isn’t about them.

Finally, I must add that using hashtags properly is a great asset to twitter, so please DO use them whenever you are joining the conversation. And for those of you that like to tag ridiculousthings, that’s perfectly fine too.

In this installment of Trend Tuesday we are going to focus on Linkedin – that little ol’ social networking site that is finally getting its turn to shine.

These days after the music starts, the lights fade, and the dance floor clears – its Linkedin that gets to stand in the spotlight playing the part of bell of the ball. And if we think of the hard working and often neglected Linkedin as Cinderella, then it’s the recession that gets to play the role of the Fairy Godmother.

The recession has given Linkedin a much needed shot in the arm

If we look at the numbers before November ’08 we see Linkedin growing only very slowly. Even with the introduction of groups, answers and apps Linkedin was struggling to find its place in a world where Facebook is ever blurring the lines between our professional and personal lives.

For most of us, Linkedin has served as little more than a robust and up-to-date online resume. We weren’t sure how to leverage the generally accepted knowledge that executives are on Linkedin, even if they are not part of any other online social network. We weren’t even sure what the heck we were supposed to do with Linkedin at all.

Increased activity is not just job hunters

Unfortunately, these days with the unemployment rate reaching a 14 year high a lot of users are optimizing their profiles and those new fandangled updates from Linkedin are coming in handy. The increased activity and drive of job hunters to find and make new connections is putting Linkedin back on the radar. Like rubber-neckers on the freeway, those alerts and invitations in email in-boxes have us giving Linkedin a little more time and attention. We are all starting to actually use Linkedin toâ€¦ wellâ€¦ network, and that’s good for Linkedin. It can also be good for any of the a fore mentioned job hunters.